Trying to make sense of a world gone mad.... blogging on Climate Change, War, Terror - plus local stuff about Bristol and music and more...

Friday, February 22, 2008

Neo-Labour's CONsultation (again, again).

You can't read about the actions of this government without a strong surge of anger each time a minster opens their mouth. Conforming to the stereotype of a politician in that they say whatever and ignore the people;

Another big recent consultation concerned changes to the planning laws now going through parliament. Here too the ghost of Ambrose Bierce hovers: it is widely believed among those consulted that the bill was drafted before their responses were analysed. The bill was inspired by the public inquiry into Heathrow terminal five, which lasted five years - too long, to the government's mind. The terminal, which opens next month, was authorised by that inquiry on condition it is the final expansion of Heathrow, a condition accepted by the government and now rather forgotten about. The bill severely curtails the right to object to planning applications, and it will become law before the British Airports Authority submits its application to build a third runway.

Yes, it's a stitch-up of colossal proportions. The way is being cleared for BAA, a Spanish-owned private company, to displace thousands of people; to flatten the historic village of Sipson (no consultation roadshow has been held there, owing to lack of a "suitable location") - all in order to build a runway generating annual carbon emissions equivalent to those of Kenya.

This government claims to care about what 'the people' say, but clearly does not. It claims to care about climate change, but clearly does not. Do I think any other government would act differently? No, they are addicted to the growth model and nothing, not climate-chaos or democracy, will change the government. And don't think it is just here, this government and now. Recently released papers in the U$A show how the government there turned a blind eye to terrorism;

Cuban exiles based in the United States – during George H.W. Bush’s year in charge of the CIA – outpaced Palestinian terrorists in terms of a total body count... After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, the U.S. government presented itself as the innocent victim of international terrorism with a moral right not only to pursue the “bad guys” across the globe but to subject some captives to torture, to lock others up indefinitely without trial, and to launch attacks that have killed many thousands of innocents.

In the years that have followed, there were few recollections of the days under the current president’s father when the bloodiest terrorists were 'our guys.'

"If you want to know about governments, all you have to know is two words: governments lie."I.F. Stone

"The State is an abstraction devouring the life of the people." Michael Bakunin

"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."Jeremy Hardy